A podcast all about Japanese cartoons and comics as discussed by three self-proclaimed experts in the world of anime and manga! Plus anime news / reviews, coverage of classic anime, hentai / yaoi, and much, much more. Updated every week. We hope.

Anime World Order Show # 107 – Otakon 2012 Report

Three months between proper episodes is pretty deplorable even for us. We had meant for this episode to contain our Otakon 2012 report as well as the review of Unico, but the report ran long so we’re splitting this in half. Joining us for the con report via rather low quality landline reception is Anime Weekend Atlanta’s Video Programming Director (and amateur Strong Sad impersonator), Darius Washington of FandomPost.com. We tried recording this using Google Hangout instead of Skype. If everybody sounds “strange,” what you’re hearing is the difference between compression algorithms. CURSE YOU, TECHNOLOGY! We’ll be back to normal for the review.

If you need an anime review in your life, Daryl was on Fast Karate for the Gentleman talking about Crying Freeman. If you just need more podcast hours to fill time, Daryl was also on the ANNCast with Mike Toole to talk about…Otakon 2012 again! Some content recycling inevitable, but we also took two hours of Twitter questions regarding a variety of random anime-related topics, and talked a bit about Lupin the Third: The Woman Named Fujiko Mine.

I got them cheaper. And I look at them and cry, cry over the stunning production values, values that fell apart as they continued their tiny slate of releases. Ah, Bandai Visual!

(of course, pre-doomed from the start because Japanese-style pricing just doesn’t fly here. Had those sexy, beautiful box sets been around $40 MSRP ($10 more than a ‘normal’ anime release) they would have likely sold….well…100 more. I wish it could have been more but, hey, Patlabor. It’s not FLCL or whatever.

And Gerald, most excellent Cobra cosplay! and Erin makes a sexy Lady. Look out world!

True, for this price these are a must buy for Patlabor (or Oshii) fans.

I already had a UK version of a DVD containing both movies that I got when I discovered Patlabor for myself. But now I also bought these two DVDs and they are truly awesome, I have not seen any other releases that have so comprehensive extras.

BTW, does the Honneamise branding have any other sets that are still available and worth picking up? Or did the other sell better?

Do you folks think that the interest in Gen Urobuchi among new fans can be coaxed into them thinking about who writes/directs/produces the anime they enjoy in general? I don’t really like Madoka personally, but I do like that people know who he is… (How the hell did that happen, anyhow?) Can video rooms help somehow, or is it too late for them? I’m tired of the Japanese guest panels at cons being 30-something 30-somethings. ^_^;

Why do I have the feeling that I’ve heard this before?. Was this part of a different podcast? This can’t possibly all you guys have after close to 3 months. REALLY…REALLY? Come on AWO! Have you guys just lost interest in doing the podcast? You guys are just phoning it in now. My favorite podcast isn’t really trying anymore.

The Otakon panel submission/acceptance process starts in April, meaning that’s when people start putting ideas together. Panelists are notified of confirmation around May, and the convention is in July. That is how much time I had to watch through Lupin the Third. That spans 23 TV movies, five theatrical films, four TV series, three OAVs, two manga series, and a pilot film. Plus a set of shorts. This took up…a lot of time, and that was one panel of three; finding another 15-30 minutes for Anime’s Craziest Deaths took several days too. Ripping and encoding lots of those anime OPs because the ones on Youtube just weren’t going to cut it also took a lot of time. And then we had Anime Festival Orlando the week afterwards.

Panel work takes priority because that’s effectively “paid work” in that I get a badge to the convention, and that convention date and panel start times aren’t something that can shift back. I also have to write for Otaku USA which is actual paid work that must always take precedence over recreation. Although we sell that digitally now, there are still hard deadlines for the printers. Can’t put THAT off, and as it happens I ended up writing six articles for the latest issue, which is roughly double or triple my usual workload. So on top of all that other stuff for the cons, I watched and wrote about three movies, one OAV series, one 13-episode show, and an interview which I had to transcribe word-for-word.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. But you know what? That’s not even the reason things took so long. I recorded the bonus episode because nobody else was ready to do a review yet. People got grad school with research papers to write. People got jobs to work. We didn’t lose interest. We lost FREE TIME.

Also: the repeated lamentations of YOU SPECIFICALLY sure as Hell don’t make me inclined to spend a few days editing right after we just got done with this one. But I’ll probably do it anyway.

A shame you guys didn’t manage to corner the Gundam guy and get answers to the questions that (some) American fans have. Hopefully ANN’s interview will be in the same ballpark of enlightenment as yours would’ve been. But I think that laptop story from the Satelight panel is one of (if not) the best example(s) of Japan’s incomprehensible logic, since you can tell it to anyone and they’ll get how nonsensical it is.

BTW, Daryl, MuvLuv Total Eclipse Episode 2 would be perfect for Anime’s Craziest Deaths. [Oh, don’t worry. I have that one already. –Daryl]

Awesome, I wish y’all could do some anime expo stuff, I’ve got J-POP in San Francisco coming up. And when there’s only 4 minutes and 56 seconds left and Gerald keeps getting cut off, JESUS CHRIST I was laughing, just awesome. 3 times lol.

I picked up those Patlabor DVDs. Thanks for the link, Mike Toole. Another great episode guys. Since episodes are sporadic, why not consider doing a monthly podcast instead? Or even one of Daryl’s solo episodes once a month would be great.

Thanks to the AWO I’ve bagged the 2 Patlabor special edition boxsets. A very nice deal for 15 € each (including shipping to europe). I love those films, especially the second one and I will finally retire my Manga Video VHS version.

@ Steve Harrison : I think Bandai simply over estimated the potential buying market for those boxsets. They should have made 1000 or less of them not 10000. And the MSRP was well justified in light of the amount of extras. Good for us that the price was slashed after several years, but honestly 90$ was not japanese pricing. Japanese pricing is 90$ for a single film and no fucking extras. This, this is like the Gundam movie trilogy special edition boxset that was released some years ago in Italy for 80 €. You got the restored films in full progressive with the original soundtrack, a 200 page sketchbook about gundam and a 100 page extra booklet with interviews etc… These things don’t come cheap, no matter how much we wish they were.

Ah, but you’re not taking into account that Bandai Visual USA had started on the whole Honneamise (gah, I HATE that name! what a stupid name for a company/branch/branding! Impossible to remember, spell and pronounce!) thing when Musicland Group (Suncoast et al. ) was at its peak and would have been an assured 6000 units minimum sales. By the time they got to market Suncoast was dead and clearly they had a huge uphill battle moving even 4000 units at retail. Heck, my Patlabor 2 set is numbered in the 1,500s.

And $90 sure as hell is Japanese pricing, friend. The books and box make it pretty, but a 2-disc ‘special edition’ for a typical American movie was generally not more than $30 MSRP. Even whoop-de-do deluxe editions tend to be around $50, you have to get to the ‘plastic Ape head case filled with all Planet of the Apes movies and TV’ level when you get $90 and up.

(and I can’t help but suspect that Italian Gundam set was maybe a bootleg. Lots of robot stuff gets bootlegged over there and given how that’s not the way the Gundam Movies are allowed to exist nowadays, I dunno. just don’t know. )

As the sole behind-the-scenes multi-millionaire sponsor of AWO, I humbly request that this product of several minutes of poor photoshopping be embedded into the mp3 file of the Unico review: http://s13.postimage.org/a3kcy76vr/Unirald.jpg

@ Steve Harrison : The Italian release of Gundam was not a bootleg. It was as legit as they come and with the 100% support of Sunrise. For what it’s worth, we Italians got the best release of Gundam outside of Japan for the original tv series, the films (from the UC continuity + gundam wing endless waltz), and the ova 0083. Special editions boxsets that were 100% equal to their japanese counterparts. Plus of course the Gundam Unicorn blu-rays and dvds. Dubbed and in special edition version (slipcover, translated booklet, and postcard) for every volume. No other edition outside of Japan is like ours. Oh and the price is 20 € per dvd and 25 € per blu-ray. And no these Gundam Unicorn editions don’t have english, only italian and japanese audio tracks.

We also get nice editions among other things like Conan the Boy in Future, Trider G7, Daitarn 3, Kyashan, Tekkaman, Hurrican Polimar etc… All nice legit editions. Don’t go making stupid assumptions about a market you know nothing about. Italy is with France the biggest anime/manga market in world right after Japan. And it puts the US market to shame.

As to the whole Bandai Visual thing. Yes timing was a definite factor in their problems. On the other hand, they failed time and time again to read the american market. But THAT should not be a suprise for the AWO listeners. As I said in some previous comment, japanese businessmen are more likely to commit seppuku than change their ways about doing business. And to be honest we all know that american audiences hate sports anime and mecha anime. So of course Patlabor was never going to be a best seller. The “high” price was just the nail on the coffin. The market does not sustain large scale sales at very high prices. So either you sell at low price, or you sell at high price but then you make very few boxsets to justify the cost. And you tailor the number of boxsets to approximately the number of people that will spend the money on the film/ova/tv series.

As for the price, don’t mix traditional tv series/films with anime. The two have completely different economies. Different pricing strutures etc…This is true in Japan, it’s true in Italy, it’s true in France and it’s true in the US. So yes the Patlabor special editions were priced highly compared to real life films or tv series, but they are priced correctly for the anime market. And as I said 90$ for 2 dvds + translated storyboards + interviews and other extras is justified. Were it 90$ for only 2 dvds I would agree with you that the price would have been too high. In this case though I think you’re in error.

So, Daryl really went ahead and showed Blood-C to hundreds unsuspecting victims? That must have been quite a sight. Even I haven’t witnessed the uncensored violence from the BD release.

In a way I’m glad that you did because, as part of the shows deliberate design, many people were put off in the first three episodes. Therefore most of the internet missed out on the insanity that transpired in the second half of the series. Which is a shame because the staff who worked on the show clearly went to some fairly extreme lengths with their gruesome animation.